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Marketers of Three Get-Rich-Quick Infomercial Scams to Pay $478 Million Fine

Marketers of three get-rich-quick schemes are made to pay $478 million after the Federal Trade Commission won a court judgment against the marketers, alleged to have deceived almost one million customers with fake fast-gain schemes. The guilty parties have been banned from infomercial and telemarketing businesses.

This huge fine serves on the one hand as a lesson to all those who want to make money by using phony get-rich-quick schemes to deceive people and on the other hand remind consumers that these easy-money promises are far from being the solution to their problems.

People were made to believe they would earn easy money if they purchased and used their programs. The Court Order said the three “misled consumers using the infomercials for the John Beck program”, “John Alexander's Real Estate Riches in 14 Days”, and "Jeff Paul's Shortcuts to Internet Millions."

Not only did the marketers sell the $39.95 easy-money system, but they also convinced the majority of the buyers to also pay for personal coaching services, which added $14,995, to the purchase fee.

FTC has started a fierce fight against financial opportunists who piggyback on the recent economic situation of unemployment, debt, and foreclosure. The battle is in both law enforcement actions and by educating people on how to avoid falling into their traps.

These get-rich-quick scams mostly concern fake promises of well-paid jobs, government funding and sometimes making-money tools like those found by Bitdefender this May that sold the illusion of a $91,546.76 a month profit.